Thursday, December 29, 2005

tanah melayu

i was digging my hard drive for my scanned letter from tan sri abdul aziz sharing his experience drafting the NEP but i couldn't find it. chait! so, i can't share the content here. the original letter has been given to this certain feriz omar by mama. who is this guy pun? i know he's doing the same, tapping the seniors punya brain and experience but then takkan kot nak suruh them seniors do work for him. at their level, they no longer get bogged down with the nitty gritty, instead they get a coolie to do it for them. guess who's the coolie? sir, yes sir! :op

anyways, Bumiputera rights.

I agree with the government's work towards promoting Bumiputras, if that doesn't sound too condescending, as I would with affirmative action in North America and with Chavez's (Venezuela) distributing land from the wealthy minority to the majority who are poor.

it saddens me to hear my peers criticising our Bumiputera rights and sounding as though they are ashamed of being a Bumiputera. surprisingly, these same people are them who are given scholarships for their studies. they have forgotten.

my father had the same attitude and still do; if the chinese can do it, so can we. he rejected my MARA scholarship for me and sent me to the UK. (i think i'll be revealing what most don't know about me. erk! i always look OK, rite. :op)

i was there all alone to fend myself, literally. i juggled my studies with two part-time jobs and sometimes three to pay for my tuition fees and cost of living. i know personally 2 chinese who went into a depression and dropped out trying to do what i did. i had to make a difficult choice of dropping my architecture dream and took up accounting and finance, simply because it's the cheapest course. when i tell people that i took up the course because it's the cheapest course, they look at me as though i'm nuts. :op

my problem then, i was so bogged down trying to solve my problem my dad's way and get my degree, i forgot that there are bursaries as well as scholarships i can tap into. hehe! tak pandai gaks wa ni.

anyways, final year came, i had to get creative 'cos i was positive i'd not get a good degree if i were to continue with what i was doing. so i wrote to HSBC, and got some dosh with no strings attached. bagus jugak pandai menulis nih. hehe! then i remembered MARA and they paid for my final year. alhamdulillah!

so, i had a taste of both world. i don't think many can survive my ordeal. i wouldn't want anyone else to go through it. I vote for the rights to remain.

Moreover, when the non-Bumi signed for citizenship, they signed a declaration saying aye! to Bumiputera special rights (as means of redistributing wealth) and had forego any special rights. If anyone to be blamed, it's their ancestors for not having that foresight our leaders had. and article 157 kot of the constitutions said no one has the right to question these rights. ISA you go, bebeh!

More moreover, lets look at the rights at work. I would not go far. TKC today, the quota given was 20% from urban + 80% from rural (our time, the top students to go to TKC, mostly town girls). Our teachers went bezerk for it is impossible to produce the same results with the new students but the OGA complement their work so that we can still maintain the standard. Why rural students? So that they have equal access to education and can, in future, help their families improve their social economic status. What if we remove these rights?

Who gives us the rights to decide for them rural folks? Just because we've smelt the air of affluence, we go arrogant?

That's the way I see it. I may be wrong; have not eaten much salt one.